Democrats are officially in panic mode.
David Plouffe, a former White House senior adviser and strategist for both of Obama's presidential campaigns, called the Democratic loss in Florida’s special congressional race "a screaming siren," warning that the party needs to do more to encourage voter turnout in November’s midterm elections.
"We have a turnout issue," Plouffe said on Bloomberg’s Political Capital.
"This is a screaming siren that the same problems that afflicted us" in 2010 when Democrats lost control of the House "could face us again," Plouffe added.
Last week, in an attempt to calm Democrats the White House tried to claim that that Obamacare did not play a role in Republican David Jolly’s special election victory in Florida on Tuesday.
"Any fair assessment of the role the debate about the Affordable Care Act played reaches the conclusion that, at best, for Republicans it was a draw," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday. "It was not a negative or positive. It was not the decisive factor."